Department ofAtmospheric and Climate Science

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas influenced by both human and natural processes. A recent PNAS study by graduate student Eric Mei and Professors Alex Turner and Greg Hakim finds that multidecadal to centennial variability in preindustrial methane levels preserved in ice cores may not require slow climate changes or human activity to explain, but may instead arise from short-term, random fluctuations in the balance between methane sources and sinks, such as year-to-year changes in wetland or fire-related emissions. 

Carbon Brief’s analysis of its Cosmos database identifies the world’s leading institutions for climate research. The database includes more than 40,000 organizations, including universities, research laboratories, policy institutes, and government bodies, with each assigned a publication count based on how often its experts appear as authors. 

Chris Wright’s paper on lightning in shipping tracks published in ACP has been selected as a runner-up for the 2025 Paul Crutzen Publication Award.
Alli Moon’s paper on primary sulfate in Fairbanks, AK has been selected for ACS ES&T Air’s 2024 Best Paper Awards. 

“The Department of Atmospheric and Climate Science is proud to announce the inaugural recipient of the Steve Pool Memorial Scholarship in Atmospheric and Climate Science, established to honor the life and legacy of beloved UW alumnus and one of our region’s most trusted weather forecasters, Steve Pool. 

Professor Shuyi Chen, chair of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), was interviewed by The Seattle Times about the federal government’s plan to dismantle UCAR’s research center. The center, known as the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), has been criticized by federal officials, and they proposed to cut back its operations, including removing key resources like research aircraft and supercomputers. 

Recently, Professor Lynn McMurdie, graduate student Valeria Garcia, and postdoc Troy Zaremba joined the NASA research mission, North American Upstream Feature-Resolving and Tropopause Uncertainty Reconnaissance Experiment (NURTURE), based out of Labrador, Canada. 

Professor Dale Durran is named the 2026 NVIDIA Research Faculty Fellow for his contributions to research collaboration on AI for Earth system prediction!  Prof. Durran has a 25% appointment at NVIDIA as a principal research scientist, with “a research focus on deep learning earth-system modeling for sub-seasonal and seasonal forecasting, forecast ensembles, and generative methods for fine-scale modeling of convective precipitation and other mesoscale fields.”
The above image is Prof. 

“NASA announced on Thursday last week that both the University of Washington STRIVE team and the UW-affiliated EDGE team were selected to lead satellite missions to better understand Earth and improve capabilities to foresee environmental events and mitigate disasters.” The STRIVE (Stratosphere Troposphere Response using Infrared Vertically-resolved light Explorer) mission is led by Professor Lyatt Jaeglé from the Department, and the EDGE (Earth Dynamics Geodetic Explorer) mission is led by Helen Amanda Fricker at the University of California, San Diego. 

“Methane stays in the atmosphere for approximately 10 years before it is removed. Researchers need to know how much methane is removed to gauge what percentage of emissions are accumulating in the atmosphere, but the methane removal process is difficult to measure. 

“In October 2025, after 18 months of detailed atmospheric observations from Australia’s southernmost state, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility wrapped up the Cloud And Precipitation Experiment at kennaook (CAPE-k) in Tasmania.